The quickest tar command with valid syntax would be "tar t". Every switch after the first command letter is optional. Even the initial dash is optional. [[Special:Contributions/85.24.234.35|85.24.234.35]] 11:03, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

The quickest tar command with valid syntax would be "tar t". Every switch after the first command letter is optional. Even the initial dash is optional. [[Special:Contributions/85.24.234.35|85.24.234.35]] 11:03, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

:(That would also be a command that is valid in every known tar version throughout the universe.)

:(That would also be a command that is valid in every known tar version throughout the universe.)

+

+

The tar command actually has a unique syntax in unix. Classicly, it's first parameter is a subcommand (letter) followed by zero or more option letters. (And I think the subcommand had to be first.) Parameters for the options follow in sequence after that, in the same order the options where listed. Then, for the 'c' subcommand, an input filename list follows. This syntax was rather painful when you had perhaps 5 different option letters each with parameters, but this was a normal enough occurance when you specified the tape drive, tape block size, tape length, and a few others I can't even remember. Early implementations would have a file listing tape configurations so you could pick one and all its parameters with a single digit. In any case, it should be noted that a dash ('-') was actually NOT ALLOWED on the parameters. More recent versions of tar have attempted to add the more common unix option parsing, but still support the dash-less form. Having said all that, I tend to prefer "tar xvzf filename.tar.gz" and "tar tvzf filename.tar.gz". [[User:Divad27182|Divad27182]] ([[User talk:Divad27182|talk]]) 20:18, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Revision as of 20:18, 23 February 2013

I thought the title text would be "tar --help"
123.202.19.132 06:59, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

The comic is about the difficulty of the tar program options.

Even if his life depended on it and after years of usage, Bob/Randall could not come up with the right parameters without looking them up. So a situation is shown, where Bob's life depends on coming up with the right parameters:

It shows an atomic warhead

It has a user interface, which requests any valid tar command

If it is not entered on the first try within 10s, the bomb is not disarmed and potentially explodes on the spot

Randall has come up with a situation, where the unix guy Bob can be the hero by knowing tar parameters. This is a pipe dream of a geek; nobody cares IRL, if you know tar parameters on the first try.

It is hilarious, that

the bomb says in full detail the rules including that you should not cheat and it probably has no means to check whether you cheated. This is no game, but feels like one. In war and love every means is allowed - even cheating; it would also be self-defense for disarming the bomb; Bob and his colleagues are not even considering to cheat.

the user has root access to the bomb, shown by the bomb as ~#, the tilde is the home directory, the # signifies super-user rights; even if the available programs prevent the bomb from being shutdown or disabled by a nonintended way, normally no root access is given for users of linux devices during normal usage; and disarming the bomb with official rules is normal usage of a bomb; a root prompt should not be necessary, if the bomb software is designed and configured well; possibly the unix prompt is a simulation for entering an answer

Bob shurely needs more than 10s to come. So the bomb will have announced that questions, which require unix knowledge will follow - or has already asked other Unix questions; perhaps after 10s without entering anything a new question comes up

this bomb can be disarmed with "common knowledge"

Small notes:

The screen looks to be really grayscale (esp. the inverted "TEN") - not just because of the comic; it has at least 3 colors (black, white, tar gray); it could be that the "TEN" is updated dynamically and is thus inverted

The comic is quite black: The screen and the bomb; Randall seldomly uses solid black areas; the bomb is a gloomy topic so it is black like "tar" (pun)

I think there is a visual double pun in this strip: the bomb disarmed by a tar command is a reference to the tarbombs, but it also looks like the Tsar Bomb(a). --Koveras (talk) 08:24, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

I don’t think it looks like Tsar Bomba. If anything, it is much more similar to Fat Man. --Mormegil (talk) 08:38, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Furthermore, the Tsar bomb was much bigger; I think I've read somewhere that it had the size of a bus. --95.34.7.179 11:11, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

I think another joke is in the fact that you don't know which Unix is running on the bomb so you don't actually know which parameter layout is supported. tar --help for example may or may not be valid since -- is a GNU extension.

Googling tar commands would definitely take more than 10 seconds, especially considering that Rob did not take his computer. (A smartphone is an option, but...)
Then again, why would "ten" be written in letters instead of numerals? Greyson (talk) 13:28, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

I think the clock is already counting down. So probably they've discovered the bomb with still some minutes on the display. They call Bob when there is a minute left, He arrives with 25 sec's on the display and 15s later the screendump is made... 86.82.116.63 22:33, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

I think the current explantion is missing an important point: the tar commands are not that much difficult. What makes tar complicated is that there are many different implementations. The linux guy knows only gnu tar, but some unices have much different implementations and different commands. "tar --help" is certainly not available on an old hpux, for example. That make is difficult to type a valid tar command – even more if you don't know the implementation.
212.222.53.78 10:26, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm a Windows user, so bear with me. Couldn't he type something like "man tar" to get the proper usage of the "tar" command on this particular system? It's a "man" command, so it shouldn't count as a try towards typing a "tar" command. Of course, maybe the bomb would explode if he entered anything else. 70.31.159.230 13:46, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, all standard Unix installations should have man installed. But many mini installations don't, so these days Google is the standard backup.CityZen (talk) 14:58, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Randall's joke is spot on, as usual. I've been using UNIX for nearly 30 years. Windows User's solution is elegant. Before Google there was the man command. In all seriousness, productivity on a UNIX box can be greatly enhanced simply by keeping good notes. I keep patterns of all sorts of UNIX commands handy so I don't have to look them up. As Wikipedia implies, tar -tf (I prefer -tvf) should be memorized because one quickly learns that one should always inspect tarballs before unpacking them. – tbc (talk) 14:11, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

One of the reasons that tar is so useful is that it can often do exactly what you want when other, more obvious commands cannot. For instance, recursively copying a directory from one place to another (using "cp") can be tricky when symbolic links are involved, and thus people memorize incantations like "tar cf - . | (cd dest; tar xf -)". As well, it's a standard tool that's guaranteed to be found on every Unix installation (unlike zip/unzip).CityZen (talk) 14:58, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

What about "tar xf foo.tar"? I always assume options without dash work everywhere because options they are the original scheme. Of course, foot.tar might be absent, but in my view, the command itself remains valid.
As to the time limit: I imagine a countdown starts when the first key is hit - that leaves little time for "man tar". 46.142.35.251 16:49, 1 February 2013 (UTC) madd

No one mentioned "What are four lowercase letters that are not legal flag arguments to the Berkeley UNIX version of `ls'?" question either ... -- Hkmaly (talk) 00:07, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Does this mean we should start retroactively rename cueball to "rob"?

Rob is a Cueball, not every Cueball, so no. JET73L (talk) 14:05, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

There is something morbid in the subtext here.... I have a feeling that Randall is going to kill off Megan, Rob, and "White Hat"... Greyson (talk) 01:47, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Randall, I am disappoint! I haven't used tar for more than a year and I don't err anymore: tar -xvzf file (.gz) or tar -xvjf file (.bz2), and I still consider myself quite the newb. Works on all flavors of linux I tried (I like trying linuxes on VMs, dunno about other unixes, but everytime I need it, I get it right, so I wouldn't even consider this in my list of hardest programs to get right first time). For those interested: -x extract -v verbose (I like it) -z uncompress (for some compression types, in some flavors this works with bz2, IIRC) -j uncompress (for bz2, maybe others). 189.123.132.123 20:51, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Originally bzip used -y. Not speaking about fact that bzip is pretty new - and some unixes don't have ANY compression support in their tar. -- Hkmaly (talk) 00:03, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

The quickest tar command with valid syntax would be "tar t". Every switch after the first command letter is optional. Even the initial dash is optional. 85.24.234.35 11:03, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

(That would also be a command that is valid in every known tar version throughout the universe.)

The tar command actually has a unique syntax in unix. Classicly, it's first parameter is a subcommand (letter) followed by zero or more option letters. (And I think the subcommand had to be first.) Parameters for the options follow in sequence after that, in the same order the options where listed. Then, for the 'c' subcommand, an input filename list follows. This syntax was rather painful when you had perhaps 5 different option letters each with parameters, but this was a normal enough occurance when you specified the tape drive, tape block size, tape length, and a few others I can't even remember. Early implementations would have a file listing tape configurations so you could pick one and all its parameters with a single digit. In any case, it should be noted that a dash ('-') was actually NOT ALLOWED on the parameters. More recent versions of tar have attempted to add the more common unix option parsing, but still support the dash-less form. Having said all that, I tend to prefer "tar xvzf filename.tar.gz" and "tar tvzf filename.tar.gz". Divad27182 (talk) 20:18, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

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